The telephone interview is the first chance you have to actually talk to the company you’re applying to directly, so what I thought might be helpful is if we can gather some tips, examples questions and things to expect here. From doing a little research, here are my findings.

The phone interview lasts about an hour (though sometimes longer), and they encourage you to be ‘curious’. It’s a tip that I find helpful for all interviews actually, but it seems like Shell particularly like it. Go in armed with some questions you have for them, and put across your enthusiasm and curiosity for working there.

Others have said they really like questions answered in the CAR format, another useful tip for any interview. This stands for Context, Action, and Result. Try and make sure every answer you give first provides some context, then you talk about the action you took in that context, and finally talk about the result of that action.

Here are a few example questions I’ve come across – nothing out of the ordinary here, so please feel free to add more:

• Describe a time you had to implement a new approach to overcome a challenge.
• How have you dealt with a team member whose opinions differed from yours?
• Why Shell?
• Have you ever had to build a relationship with someone you didn’t know to complete a project?
• Tell me about a time you went above and beyond for a project.
• If you were the CEO of an oil company, how would you build and maintain the reputation and integrity of that company?
• How do you like to monitor your progress?
• How do you think X area will develop in the following years?

Hopefully those are something to get started with and again, please add your own experiences and questions!